Mark Purdy: Long-awaited Stanford-Oregon game is here ... and hurry up, you won't want to miss it

All right, citizens. Here we go. Stanford's football team has not lost a game in the past 406 days. But as we approach the kickoff for Saturday's long-awaited matchup against Oregon ...

(Wait! Oregon's hurry-up offense is on the field already! No kickoff! No huddle! The Ducks are lining up for a play!)

Sorry. As we were saying, Stanford has been waiting for the perfect opportunity to show it is for real. And when the ABC television cameras show up at the stadium and ...

(Hold on! Oregon has already run three plays and has another first down! The Ducks are snapping the ball again! They're also simultaneously changing their uniforms to another unfathomably ugly color!)

OK, where were we? Oh, right. This is going to be a fun show. Even if everybody in the stadium will be made breathless by Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck and Oregon's bevy of speedy offensive weapons that ... (Look out! Oregon just scored! But don't relax! Ducks coach Chip Kelly has decided to skip both the one-point and two-point conversions -- just so the Ducks can immediately go line up for an onside kick! Brent Musburger just sprained his tongue!)

Enough. You get the point. This is a day that every serious college football fan has had circled on the calendar since way back in August. Although for the record, Luck said he didn't do that.

"I don't own a calendar," he explained earlier this week. "I don't have a watch, either."

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He won't be late to the line of scrimmage come late Saturday afternoon. He and his Cardinal teammates have a 9-0 record. The Ducks are 8-1 and undefeated in the Pac 12. Both are ranked in the nation's top six. The conference division championship is at stake.

If you've followed Bay Area football history, then you know that this sort of home game is very rare at Stanford. How rare? In terms of pregame hype, it is probably the biggest since 1940, when a No. 4-ranked Stanford team owned a 7-0 record and faced a No. 19-ranked Oregon State team with a Rose Bowl trip on the line. Stanford was victorious, 28-14, then won at Cal the following week and beat Nebraska in the Rose Bowl to polish off a 10-0 season.

The 2011 Stanford team has the chance to do even better than that, if it runs the table and plays in the BCS national title game. This is why the Stanford Daily reported this week that tickets to Saturday's game are trading for an average of $400 and up to $1,200 on the "secondary market," which is the sanitary 21st-century term for "scalping."

Meanwhile, out on the venerable campus Oval, the ESPN "GameDay" crew has set up its temporary stage for Saturday morning's live telecast. Of course, the show will begin at 6 a.m. because the show is geared to East Coast time. Stanford being Stanford, the only students caught on camera may be those wandering back from the library after pulling an all-nighter.

That's OK with the Cardinal football tribe. A refreshing thing about Stanford coaches and players, though, is that they are very cool with the detached appreciation they receive from classmates and faculty. They knew the deal when they enrolled at the school. Plus, given the sad stuff we have learned this week about what can happen if football becomes way too important at a university, Stanford is looking especially sane and solid.

"Very rarely do people I don't know come up to me and say random stuff," said wide receiver Griff Whalen, almost proudly. "But I think people are excited."

Coach David Shaw, meanwhile, recalled a recent conversation with a Stanford doctor who said he was a fan. As the conversation proceeded, Shaw discovered that the doctor was working on a cure for cancer and making some exciting progress."He's going to be at the game," Shaw said. "But trust me, Stanford vs. Oregon is not high on his list of priorities."

That doesn't mean the Stanford players have been studying calculus and biology all week. Their last defeat was at Oregon in October of 2010. The Cardinal realizes this is a measuring stick. Luck confessed that last summer, if he had a few free minutes, he'd throw in an Oregon videotape to study. He and several teammates also admit that whenever a Ducks game has been televised this autumn and it didn't conflict with a Cardinal game, they've tuned in to watch. Stanford won't lose this game for lack of focus.

It might lose for lack of speed throughout the lineup, however. Stanford has beefy linemen and nifty receivers and the arm of Luck. Oregon has speed and quickness all over the field, with the no-huddle attack searching for one-on-one matchups in space.

"You can play well against Oregon and give up 35 points," Shaw pointed out. "That offense is always looking to find a weakness, and if one guy is out of position, it can cost you."

For casual fans, then, here is the simplest way to understand if things are going well for Stanford: If the game is being played mostly in the middle of the field, between or near the hash marks, then the Cardinal is probably winning. If the game is being played largely outside the hash marks and more toward the sidelines, Oregon is almost surely winning.

But either way, points will be scored. Want a prediction? The last time these two teams played at Stanford Stadium, two years ago, the Cardinal won 51-42. That won't happen again. This time, it will be 52-41, Stanford.

(Hey! Hey! Hey! Don't leave your seat! Oregon somehow just managed to run two plays at the same time, with two quarterbacks and two footballs! Stanford is calling in a scientist! And it's not reviewable!)